Preface — by Jing Bo

I humbly consider this. So wide is what the round vault covers and the square earth carries, and so various are the things that hold understanding and bear a soul, that the writings which discourse on heaven cannot reach to the end of it, and the writings which divided the earth cannot tell its source. From this one knows that the places the gazetteers have not yet handed down, and the places the king's teaching has not yet reached, are more than can be told.

Look closely at India as a country, and its origin is ancient. Sages and worthies drove their carriages there one after another, and benevolence and righteousness became its custom there. But its affairs broke off in former ages and its soil was cut off from the Middle Land. The Shan hai jing did not record it; the Wang hui did not write it down. Zhang Qian opened up the road, yet he set his heart on nothing more than the Qiong bamboo; and when the way to Kunming was closed, effort was poured out in vain on digging a sacred pool. So it was that a sign of good omen appeared among the fixed stars, yet the dark and wondrous truth lay buried a thousand years; a dream showed one girded with the sun, yet the divine light stayed hidden ten thousand li away. When at last Cai Yin went to ask after the Way and Moteng entered Luoyang, the scriptures were stored in the stone chamber, but the depths of the Dragon Palace were not exhausted; the Buddha's likeness was painted on the Liang Terrace, but how could it reach the beauty of Vulture Peak? After that time the age and its government had much to fear. Eunuchs rode on power, the Eastern Capital fell in ruins, and three states stood like the legs of a cauldron. The empress's kin made a breach, the central court was cut down and torn to strips. Law and statute perished at Hangu and Luoyang, and beacon fires warned at the passes and the frontier. Ramparts rose thick in the four suburbs. How much more, then, in a land as far off as this! Yet even so, travelers fishing for rare things came now and then, and they left a fair number of notes. How could they know all that those lands bring forth? They only gathered the divine scriptures, and did not reach the end of the meaning of true suchness. The Sui made all one and truly labored to widen its borders, yet even so it looked back to the western sea and sighed, and looked toward the eastern fence and wore itself out. Those who raised banners beyond the Jade Gate were indeed many, but of those who crossed the headwaters of the Pamirs to any profit there is nothing worth recording. How could any point to the Snow Mountains and gallop far, or look on the Dragon Pool and take a breath there? This was simply because virtue did not cover all things and awe did not reach afar. When our great Tang took the world, it opened the whole compass of it and founded the imperial plan, it swept away the baleful comets and cleared the path of heaven. Its merit is the equal of creation, its brightness the equal of the sun and moon that shine down. Men were granted a second life, and flesh came back on their bones from the jaws of jackals and wolves; households were granted long years, and souls came home from the waste ground of goblins. It gathers the other peoples in Gao Street and takes the far wilds into its map. It makes a garden of the ten isles and a pool of the encircling seas, it counts the Five Emperors small and the High Sovereigns mean.

From childhood the Master was steeped in the gate of the Law, and he grieved that he had never trodden the Jetavana garden. Grown, he cherished the true traces, and looking up to the Deer Park he set his heart on it. To lift his skirts and go to that pure land was a wish he had held for long. It happened that the simple wind was bending westward and the birds that keep the seasons were turning east, and in the third year of Zhenguan he took up his staff and set out on the road. Leaning on the emperor's holy power he came to strange lands, and he braved doubled dangers as if they were level ground. Borrowing unseen help he walked fearful roads, and each time he was surely in peril he came through. Heat and cold changed by turns, and after many windings he arrived at last. Asking after the true form, he saw what is not seen between emptiness and being; examining the fine and subtle widely, he heard what is not heard on the edge of arising and ceasing. He cleared the crowd of doubts from the sea of nature, and opened wondrous awakening at the ford where men lose their way. Then he gathered and shaped the many scriptures, and there was no phrase he did not exhaust; he examined the traces of the holy ones besides, and there was not one thing he did not look into. He traveled about for many years, and only then turned back. In the first month of the nineteenth year he reached Chang'an. The scriptures and treatises he brought were six hundred and fifty-seven works, and an edict was given that they be translated.

The countries he trod himself were one hundred and ten, and the countries he heard of were twenty-eight. Of some, the matter is seen in the earlier books; of some, the name appears for the first time in the present age. There is none that does not eat of the peace and drink of the bounty, and bow its forehead and know where to turn; none that does not ask for officers and change its speech, and make a ladder of the mountains to bring gifts. They rejoice in the palace court and clap hands together, they put on cap and sash and gather in crowds. As for the differences in their products and their climate, and the variety of their customs, mountains and rivers, for what is far he examined the records of those countries, and for what is near he asked the old men in detail. Distant as those other lands are, they stand here before the eye. Without the labor of holding a writing tablet, they are already set out in full on the silk. It is named the Da Tang xiyu ji, one case in twelve scrolls. I humbly consider that the writing of events and the recording of words are indeed refined out of what is slight and roundabout; still, I hope that trifling words and small talk may help to fill what has been left out. Jing Bo, assistant gentleman for composition in the Palace Library, writes this preface.